THE REMOULDING OF GROBY LINGTON

``A man is known by the company he keeps.``

In the morning-room of his sister-in-law's house Groby
Lington fidgeted away the passing minutes with the demure
restlessness of advanced middle age. About a quarter of an
hour would have to elapse before it would be time to say his
good-byes and make his way across the village green to the
station, with a selected escort of nephews and nieces. He
was a good-natured, kindly dispositioned man, and in theory
he was delighted to pay periodical visits to the wife and
children of his dead brother William; in practice, he
infinitely preferred the comfort and seclusion of his own
house and garden, and the companionship of his books and his
parrot to these rather meaningless and tiresome incursions
into a family circle with which he had little in common. It
was not so much the spur of his own conscience that drove
him to make the occasional short journey by rail to visit
his relatives, as an obedient concession to the more
insistent but vicarious conscience of his brother, Colonel
John, who was apt to accuse him of neglecting poor old
William's family. Groby usually forgot or ignored the
existence of his neighbour kinsfolk until such time as he
was threatened with a visit from the Colonel, when he would
put matters straight by a burned pilgrimage across the few
miles of intervening country to renew his acquaintance with
the young people and assume a kindly if rather forced
interest in the well-being of his sister-in-law. On this
occasion he had cut matters so fine between the timing of
his exculpatory visit and the coming of Colonel John, that
he would scarcely be home before the latter was due to
arrive. Anyhow, Groby had got it over, and six or seven
months might decently elapse before he need again sacrifice
his comforts and inclinations on the altar of family
sociability. He was inclined to be distinctly cheerful as
he hopped about the room, picking up first one object, then
another, and subjecting each to a brief bird-like scrutiny.

Presently his cheerful listlessness changed sharply to
an attitude of vexed attention. In a scrap-book of drawings
and caricatures belonging to one of his nephews he had come
across an unkindly clever sketch of himself and his parrot,
solemnly confronting each other in postures of ridiculous
gravity and repose, and bearing a likeness to one another
that the artist had done his utmost to accentuate. After
the first flush of annoyance had passed away, Groby laughed
good-naturedly and admitted to himself the cleverness of the
drawing. Then the feeling of resentment repossessed him,
resentment not against the caricaturist who had embodied the
idea in pen and ink, but against the possible truth that the
idea represented. Was it really the case that people grew
in time to resemble the animals they kept as pets, and had
he unconsciously become more and more like the comically
solemn bird that was his constant companion? Groby was
unusually silent as he walked to the train with his escort
of chattering nephews and nieces, and during the short
railway journey his mind was more and more possessed with an
introspective conviction that he had gradually settled down
into a sort of parrot-like existence. What, after all, did
his daily routine amount to but a sedate meandering and
pecking and perching, in his garden, among his fruit trees,
in his wicker chair on the lawn, or by the fireside in his
library? And what was the sum total of his conversation with
chance-encountered neighbours? ``Quite a spring day, isn't
it?'' ``It looks as though we should have some rain.``
``Glad to see you about again; you must take care of
yourself.'' ``How the young folk shoot up, don't they?''
Strings of stupid, inevitable perfunctory remarks came to
his mind, remarks that were certainly not the mental
exchange of human intelligences, but mere empty parrot-talk.
One might really just as well salute one's acquaintances
with ``Pretty Polly. Puss, puss, miaow!'' Groby began to
fume against the picture of himself as a foolish feathered
fowl which his nephews sketch had first suggested, and which
his own accusing imagination was filling in with such
unflattering detail.

``I'll give the beastly bird away,'' he said resentfully;
though he knew at the same time that he would do no such
thing. It would look so absurd after all the years that he
had kept the parrot and made much of it suddenly to try and
find it a new home.

``Has my brother arrived?'' he asked of the stable-boy,
who had come with the pony-carriage to meet him.

``Yessir, came down by the two-fifteen. Your parrot's
dead.'' The boy made the latter announcement with the relish
which his class finds in proclaiming a catastrophe.

``My parrot dead?'' said Groby. ``What caused its
death?''

``The ipe,'' said the boy briefly.

``The ipe?'' queried Groby. ``Whatever's that?''

``The ipe what the Colonel brought down with him,'' came
the rather alarming answer.

``Th' Coloners so well as ever he was,'' said the boy; and
as no further explanation was forthcoming Groby had to
possess himself in mystified patience till he reached home.
His brother was waiting for him at the hall door.

``Have you heard about the parrot?'' he asked at once.
``'Pon my soul I'm awfully sorry. The moment he saw the
monkey I'd brought down as a surprise for you he squawked
out, `Rats to you, sir!' and the blessed monkey made one
spring at him, got him by the neck and whirled him round
like a rattle. He was as dead as mutton by the time I'd got
him out of the little beggar's paws. Always been such a
friendly little beast, the monkey has, should never have
thought he`d got it in him to see red like that. Can't tell
you how sorry I feel about it, and now of course you'll hate
the sight of the monkey.''

``Not at all,' said Groby sincerely. A few hours earlier
the tragic end which had befallen his parrot would have
presented itself to him as a calamity; now it arrived almost
as a polite attention on the part of the Fates.

``The bird was getting old, you know,'' he went on, in
explanation of his obvious lack of decent regret at the loss
of his pet. ``I was really beginning to wonder if it was an
unmixed kindness to let him go on living till he succumbed
to old age. What a charming little monkey!'' he added, when
he was introduced to the culprit.

The new-comer was a small, long-tailed monkey from the
Western Hemisphere, with a gentle, half-shy, half-trusting
manner that instantly captured Groby's confidence; a student
of simian character might have seen in the fitful red light
in its eyes some indication of the underlying temper which
the parrot had so rashly put to the test with such dramatic
consequences for itself. The servants, who had come to
regard the defunct bird as a regular member of the
household, and one who gave really very little trouble, were
scandalized to find his bloodthirsty aggressor installed in
his place as an honoured domestic pet.

``A nasty heathen ipe what don't never say nothing
sensible and cheerful, same as pore Polly did,'' was the
unfavourable verdict of the kitchen quarters.

;One Sunday morning, some twelve or fourteen months after
the visit of Colonel John and the parrot-tragedy, Miss
Wepley sat decorously in her pew in the parish church,
immediately in front of that occupied by Groby Lington. She
was, comparatively speaking, a new-comer in the
neighbourhood, and was not personally acquainted with her
fellow-worshipper in the seat behind, but for the past two
years the Sunday morning service had brought them regularly
within each other's sphere of consciousness. Without having
paid particular attention to the subject, she could probably
have given a correct rendering of the way in which he
pronounced certain words occurring in the responses, while
he was well aware of the trivial fact that, in addition to
her prayer book and handkerchief, a small paper packet of
throat lozenges always reposed on the seat beside her. Miss
Wepley rarely had recourse to her lozenges, but in case she
should be taken with a fit of coughing she wished to have
the emergency duly provided for. On this particular Sunday
the lozenges occasioned an unusual diversion in the even
tenor of her devotions, far more disturbing to her
personally than a prolonged attack of coughing would have
been. As she rose to take part in the singing of the first
hymn, she fancied that she saw the hand of her neighbour,
who was alone in the pew behind her, make a furtive downward
grab at the packet lying on the seat; on turning sharply
round she found that the packet had certainly disappeared,
but Mr. Lington was to all outward seeming serenely intent
on his hymn-book. No amount of interrogatory glaring on the
part of the despoiled lady could bring the least shade of
conscious guilt to his face.

``Worse was to follow,'' as she remarked afterwards to a
scandalized audience of friends and acquaintances. ''I had
scarcely knelt in prayer when a lozenge, one of my lozenges,
came whizzing into the pew, just under my nose. I turned
round and stared, but Mr. Lington had his eyes closed and
his lips moving as though engaged in prayer. The moment I
resumed my devotions another lozenge came rattling in, and
then another. I took no notice for a while, and then turned
round suddenly just as the dreadful man was about to flip
another one at me. He hastily pretended to be turning over
the leaves of his book but I was not to be taken in that
time. He saw that he had been discovered and no more
lozenges came. Of course I have changed my pew.''

``No gentleman would have acted in such a disgraceful
manner,'' said one of her listeners; ``and yet Mr. Lington
used to be so respected by everybody. He seems to have
behaved like a little ill-bred schoolboy.''

``He behaved like a monkey,'' said Miss Wepley.

Her unfavourable verdict was echoed in other quarters
about the same time. Groby Lington had never been a hero in
the eyes of his personal retainers, but he had shared the
approval accorded to his defunct parrot as a cheerful
well-dispositioned body, who gave no particular trouble. Of
late months, however, this character would hardly have been
endorsed by the members of his domestic establishment. The
stolid stable-boy, who had first announced to him the tragic
end of his feathered pet, was one of the first to give voice
to the murmurs of disapproval which became rampant and
general in the servants' quarters, and he had fairly
substantial grounds for his disaffection. In a burst of hot
summer weather he had obtained permission to bathe in a
modest-sized pond in the orchard, and thither one afternoon
Groby had bent his steps, attracted by loud imprecations of
anger mingled with the shriller chattering of
monkey-language. He beheld his plump diminutive servitor,
clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming
ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch
of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of
the boy's outfit, which he had removed just out of his
reach.

``The ipe's been an' took my clothes,'' whined the boy,
with the passion of his kind for explaining the obvious.
His incomplete toilet effect rather embarrassed him, but he
hailed the arrival of Groby with relief, as promising moral
and material support in his efforts to get back his raided
garments. The monkey had ceased its defiant jabbering, and
doubtless with a little coaxing from its master it would
hand back the plunder.

``If I lift you up,'' suggested Groby, ``you will just be
able to reach the clothes.''

The boy agreed, and Groby clutched him firmly by the
waistcoat, which was about all there was to catch hold of,
and lifted him clear of the ground. Then, with a deft swing
he sent him crashing into a clump of tag nettles, which
closed receptively round him. The victim had not been
brought up in a school which teaches one to repress one's
emotions---if a fox had attempted to gnaw at his vitals he
would have flown to complain to the nearest hunt committee
rather than have affected an attitude of stoical
indifference. On this occasion the volume of sound which he
produced under the stimulus of pain and rage and
astonishment was generous and sustained, but above his
bellowings he could distinctly hear the triumphant
chattering of his enemy in the tree, and a peal of shrill
laughter from Groby.

When the boy had finished an improvised St. Vitus
caracole, which would have brought him fame on the boards of
the Coliseum, and which indeed met with ready appreciation
and applause from the retreating figure of Groby Lington, he
found that the monkey had also discreetly retired, while his
clothes were scattered on the grass at the foot of the tree.

``They'm two ipes, that's what they be,'' he muttered
angrily, and if his judgment was severe, at least he spoke
under the sting of considerable provocation.

It was a week or two later that the parlour-maid gave
notice, having been terrified almost to tears by an outbreak
of sudden temper on the part of the master anent some under
done cutlets. ``'E gnashed 'is teeth at me, 'e did reely,''
she informed a sympathetic kitchen audience.

``I'd like to see 'im talk like that to me, I would,''
said the cook defiantly, but her cooking from that moment
showed a marked improvement.

It was seldom that Groby Lington so far detached himself
from his accustomed habits as to go and form one of a
house-party, and he was not a little piqued that Mrs.
Glenduff should have stowed him away in the musty old
Georgian wing of the house, in the next room, moreover, to
Leonard Spabbink, the eminent pianist.

``He plays Liszt like an angel,'' had been the hostess's
enthusiastic testimonial.

``He may play him like a trout for all I care,'' had been
Groby's mental comment, ``but I wouldn't mind betting that
be snores. He's just the sort and shape that would. And if
I hear him snoring through those ridiculous thin-panelled
walls, there'll be trouble.''

He did, and there was.

Groby stood it for about two and a quarter minutes, and
then made his way through the corridor into Spabbink's room.
Under Groby's vigorous measures the musicians flabby,
redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness
like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby
prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish
self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped
his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment
Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually
gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while
his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed and smacked,
pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can progress
across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose
utterly inadequate depths Groby perseveringly strove to
drown him. For a few moments the room was almost in
darkness: Groby's candle had overturned in an early stage of
the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely reached to the spot
where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and splutterings,
and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that was
being waged round the shores of the bath. A few instants
later the one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare
of blazing curtains and rapidly kindling panelling.

When the hastily aroused members of the house-party
stampeded out on to the lawn, the Georgian wing was well
alight and belching forth masses of smoke, but some moments
elapsed before Groby appeared with the half-drowned pianist
in his arms, having just bethought him of the superior
drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the
lawn. The cool night air sobered his rage, and when he
found that he was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer
of poor Leonard Spabbink, and loudly commended for his
presence of mind in tying a wet cloth round his head to
protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted the
situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his
finding the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his
side and the conflagration well started. Spabbink gave his
version some days later, when he had partially recovered
from the shock of his midnight castigation and immersion,
but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive comments with
which his story was greeted warned him that the public ear
was not at his disposal. He refused, however, to attend the
ceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society's
life-saving medal.

It was about this time that Groby's pet monkey fell a
victim to the disease which attacks so many of its kind when
brought under the influence of a northern climate. Its
master appeared to be profoundly affected by its loss, and
never quite recovered the level of spirits that he had
recently attained. In company with the tortoise, which
Colonel John presented to him on his last visit, he potters
about his lawn and kitchen garden, with none of his
erstwhile sprightliness; and his nephews and nieces are
fairly well justified in alluding to him as ``Old Uncle
Groby.''